Work Text:
1 / barako liberica
Shouyou knocks on Atsumu’s door a week after their break-up. He comes bundled in Atsumu’s old hoodie, the ratty gray one he stole for himself more than a year ago. It is two am and Atsumu cannot sleep; he is in between the liminal space of dream and not-dream, and with Shoyou in front of him he cannot tell which is which.
“Omi-kun told me you were still up.” Shouyou says, as an explanation. He waits patiently.
“What are you doing here?” It comes out blunt, sharp-edged, as if meant to draw blood. Atsumu wishes he can take it back. Shouyou, to his credit, takes it in stride, and smiles. Oh, he smiles.
“Omi-kun said you can’t sleep.” He repeats. “Said I might be able to help.”
The marvel with Hinata Shouyou is that he’s merciless. When Atsumu stares at his eyes there’s a trace of something beyond friendly concern, something he once knew, something he had been chasing in his dreams. Atsumu stares at the curl of his eyelashes, if only to fixate on something more tangible than the thing he’d been searching for. Shouyou loves without any mercy, which is to say with every inch of his muscle, like pure memory. How long does muscle memory stay with someone like Hinata Shouyou, sun incarnate?
“Come in,” Atsumu opens the door. “I’ll make you coffee.”
The scene plays out like this: Shouyou moves in the spaces between them carefully, yet he steps all over the invisible lines Atsumu has drawn between himself and Shouyou. The scene plays out like this: Atsumu is close enough to touch, and watching Shouyou slide into his kitchen seamlessly is a lot like walking along the edge of a cliff, on the precipice of flight, which somehow translates to him, hopelessly on the verge of falling all over again.
Atsumu wonders about forgiveness.
“Do you have decaf?” Shouyou asks. He’s peering into one of the open cabinets, which had Atsumu’s coffee beans as well as his good morning love! sticky notes from a month before tucked neatly.
“Sorry, I finished it last week,” Atsumu says. He nudges Hinata’s hip gently as he takes his place beside him and grabs an open bag of beans, dark and heavy roasted. “There’s barako, if you want that.”
“Sure.”
Shouyou settles on the countertop, perched on the marble island, legs crossed under him. He curls into himself, almost drowning in Atsumu’s clothes, and somehow Atsumu realizes this is what it means to be one of Shouyou’s ex-lovers, perpetually drawn to a sun so far away. He reaches for the electric scale and carefully measures the beans. Silence with Shouyou, it seems, is a shred of the peace Atsumu had been looking for. He puts the beans in his electric grinder and lets the humming of the machine echo in his kitchen.
“You should sit down, Tsumu,” Shoyou gestures to a stool.
“Why are you here?” He takes a step closer, and another. (When you are closest to warmth, can you find it in yourself to pull away?)
Atsumu sits down on the rickety stool, inches away from Shouyou’s denim-clad knees. He breathes in deeply, closes his eyes, and rests his head on the marble countertop, cold against his temple. He flinches when he feels Shouyou’s hand on his head, fingers curling gently into his hair, warm.
“Because I missed you.” Shouyou murmurs, tongue cruel. You don’t have the right to say that, Atsumu thinks, vicious in the face of anger and something like resentment, please don’t say that.
“Are you sure.” It is no longer a question, but a sentence cut short, meaningless.
“I am.” Certainty is a rare currency in Atsumu’s household. It sounds breathless.
In his mind Atsumu imagines Shouyou’s eyes widening in comedic shock and all the pain of a main character in a telenovela. He finds that he does not have the courage to look, so when the electric kettle clicks the most he can do is pull himself away from Shouyou’s warmth, with all the courage he manages to muster.
He pretends to brush off the weight of Shouyou’s gaze, all five hundred and forty grams of awful and half-hidden longing, and pours the boiling water over the drip filter, in careful turns. Atsumu counts until he forgets. He inhales the scent of coffee, exhales regret.
The coffee drips in silence, and it is a long way until sunrise, and Atsumu finds a bitter realization. He still remembers all fifty one ways to make Hinata Shouyou smile.
“Are you staying?” he asks when he finishes, and passes the freshly brewed coffee to Shouyou. Fingertips touch in slow motion, and he sighs. Surrender, perhaps, is not so strong a word as it is settling into a rickety stool by the knees of one Hinata Shouyou.
“As long as you need me to,” Shouyou pauses. He hums as he sips his coffee, a hand curling easily into Atsumu’s hair, resting on the countertop. The silence is an unspoken word in itself, an elephant in the room and a mockery to Atsumu’s flimsy heart.
Once, Shouyou had called him love.
“Sleep, Atsumu.” His thumb strokes over Atsumu’s temple gently. (In other words: Atsumu, let go. I’m here now.)
Atsumu closes his eyes, and when morning comes, Shouyou will be gone. He bites back a shudder as Shouyou tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. He falls asleep with a hard swallow.
1.5 / water
YOU ARE MIYA ATSUMU, TWENTY FIVE YEARS OLD, HELPLESSLY IN LOVE.
What do you do when your options are to stay or to leave, with nothing else in between? There is no end to longing for one Hinata Shouyou and the glint of Tokyo lights in his hair, nine in the evening, when you are alone in the universe of your shared balcony. Hinata Shouyou is the love of your life and he leaves in approximately seventy-two hours, chasing after a dream halfway across the ocean. There are questions you don’t want answers to. How fast can you follow the sun?
Miya Atsumu, what do you do when love leaves?
2 / brazil robusta
Consider staying.
Miya Atsumu both stays and leaves, moving to an apartment far-flung (a forty-five minute commute to their training center) with a magnificent window, overlooking a park and a distant stream. It is a quiet area, idyllic at its best and raw at worst. Hinata Shouyou is in Brazil and he is in a single-room apartment with a cat he adopted before Shouyou left.
There is no routine to longing, which is to say Atsumu wakes up six in the morning to run laps around his area and pick up a latte at their local coffee shop. Brewing fresh coffee is something he reserved only for lonely nights, in his attempt to remember Shouyou sitting on his countertop, stunning in the moonlight. He picks up cooked salmon for his cat on the way home.
Consider Hinata Shouyou, calling at seven am, a heart for his contact name.
Atsumu steps out of the shower to five missed calls, one from his brother and the other four from Hinata Shouyou, all the way from Brazil. To spite the world he calls Osamu back first, greeting him with a sickeningly sweet good morning. His mother wants him to visit, sooner than later, Osamu tells him, and he hangs up. His cat enters his room and scratches at his shin; while Atsumu is not a stranger to loneliness, the emptiness of his room is a bitter view, regardless of the blossoms beyond his window.
Atsumu cooks a sad breakfast: scrambled eggs and tomatoes, sprinkled with chili flakes. Once, Shouyou taught him how to cook it into a proper omelette, the egg silky inside and smooth on the outside. His phone rings as he finishes his food straight from the pan and he lets it go straight to voicemail.
“Shouyou?” He asks, after the seventh missed call. “Do you need anything?”
“Hi,” Shouyou says, breathless. Despite everything, Atsumu smiles. “Can I ask for a favor?”
“Go shoot.” Atsumu places his non-stick pan inside his sink. His kitchen is warm with the morning sunlight and he closes his eyes in the glare of the sun, thinking of Hinata Shouyou.
“Can you teach me how to make coffee?”
Consider longing. Atsumu freezes, both from longing and surprise, “Come again?”
“Can you teach me how to make coffee? I know there’s like, a thousand different videos out there,” Shouyou babbles. Atsumu can imagine him and his wild hands, frantic with excitement, “But you made the best coffee that night, you know, that one night I dropped by an---”
“Shouyou,” Atsumu cuts off, gently. “Isn’t it evening for you right now?”
Silence and the unmistakable clinks of a porcelain mug on the countertop, shuffling. “Yeah,” Shouyou agrees, “So can you teach me how to make coffee, Atsumu?”
Consider weakness. (Can you find it in yourself to turn away from another chance?)
“Sure,” he says, “Do you want to do it over video?”
Shouyou disconnects from the call immediately and leaves Atsumu in the wake of his impulsiveness. Good god, Atsumu despairs, what have I gotten myself into? His phone rings again and he attempts to fix his hair, looking at his reflection in the microwave. He answers the call on the fifth ring.
“Hey!” Shouyou waves, looking blurry and choppy but happy all the same. “Good morning!”
“Hey yourself,” Atsumu says. His heart hurts and it’s thrumming madly against his ribcage with every exhale. “You have your beans ready?”
Shouyou nods. Atsumu runs over the process briefly, explaining the care that goes into each cup of coffee. He shivers under Shouyou’s careful scrutiny, face warm as he finishes grinding the beans with his hand grinder. Atsumu smiles wryly at the irony of everything, of coffee and of Hinata Shouyou, who’s watching him with the softest smile, one that he pointedly ignores. He wonders if Shouyou ever figured out that coffee-making, to him, is a testament to I love you in all the mornings, a promise.
“After you get the water to ninety-six degrees, pour it over the coffee,” he explains, “Then just let it drip until you get yourself a full cup.”
Atsumu is not a stranger to longing. It comes with loneliness and his constant hunger for victory and heights, which makes him a stranger by default. And if he decides to push that longing to lengths (all 17, 360 kilometers between him and Hinata Shouyou), he faults his competitive nature and his need to push limits for it.
Hinata Shouyou watches him tenderly, without the heartbreak of distance and time. He cradles his mug of coffee carefully and meets Atsumu’s eyes.
“Thanks for calling,” Shouyou says. “And for the coffee.”
“You called first,” Atsumu shrugs, “I was just doing a friend a favor.”
Shouyou laughs, warm and light, like comfort. “A friend,” he hums, musing. There is a stagnant pause, one that fills the electronic air in between them with the unease that naturally came with separation. “I miss you, Tsumu.”
Richard Siken once said explaining is an admission of failure. Atsumu knows this because he is on the verge of demanding what right do you have to miss me, Shouyou, with grief. To ask for more is a failure on his part, lovesick. The truth is Hinata Shouyou, between the two of them, has always been the braver one. There was no need for rights to yearn.
“You do?” Atsumu asks, feigning surprise. The sun bites at his skin and Shouyou smiles, blurry.
“Yeah.” There are others words left unsaid and Atsumu’s traitorous mind fills in the blanks, like Yeah, I wish I never left, or Yeah, I regret it, except those words are products of his selfish heart. But Atsumu has known, for the longest time, it is around Shouyou that he is at his most selfless.
Atsumu sighs, but he sounds pleased. His digital clock rings and he remembers he still has volleyballs to set today, volleyballs to serve. Volleyball to play. Hinata Shouyou, on the other side of the world, has too. Somehow, the distance feels less daunting today.
“I miss you too, Shouyou.”
2.5 / orange juice
MIYA ATSUMU, WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO BE INVINCIBLE?
You are the second best setter in Japan. Once, you were Hinata Shouyou’s partner. Today you’ll stand on the court and play your best and absolutely demolish the other team, and you’ll walk home with another victory under your belt. When you settle in your bed, what does it feel like to be alone again? There is no resolution to longing, unless you find it in yourself to call him again, even if it feels like defeat. Why is there defeat in love, Miya Atsumu? Why do you think that way?
You are invincible. You are in love with Hinata Shouyou. The only question is if he still loves you back, and if you still love him, regardless of.
2.75 / orange juice, half finished
[ osamu asshole ]
You still talk to your Shouyou?
how pathetic, tsumu
[10:14 pm]
Fuck off
[11:15 pm]
Is he coming back
[11:48 pm]
idk
why r u asking me
[8:06 am]
Bc you’re the one still waiting for him
[10:00 am]
Read 1:03pm
3 / sumatra arabica
Atsumu rubs the sleep out of his eyes. He waits for Hinata Shouyou at the airport three in the morning, when everything is sickly-sweet with the aftermath of dreams. He sips his second cup of coffee, cardboard on his tongue. God, he almost wants to go home.
Hinata Shouyou arrives in Japan with a tan that leaves Atsumu breathless and hot under the collar (which, in hindsight, was made worse by his sleep-deprived mind). He’s wearing a familiar jacket, and the lump that forms in Atsumu’s throat when he sees the large MIYA printed at the back is embarrassing.
“Atsumu,” Shouyou greets him when they meet the distance halfway. “Good morning.”
Distance now feels like a far-flung myth. Atsumu marvels at Shouyou in his arms and the way they fit almost terribly, layers too thick to fully touch. The silence is a visceral afterthought, as how all babble of love eventually fades into a muted agreement of yes, this is what home is. They hug for what seems like eternity, to Atsumu, but possibly five minutes to outsiders looking in. Time and memory are fickle things, like God; Atsumu has forgotten two things: the passage of time, and the fact that they are still exes.
When he lets go of Shouyou, the weariness settles into his bones languidly but all at once. “What hotel are you staying at?” he asks Shouyou, leading them to his car.
“I’m not staying at a hotel.” Shouyou says. He keeps pace with Atsumu’s strides, even the ones purposely large, and Atsumu hopes it's a sign that maybe this time, Shouyou is meant to be by his side.
“Can I stay with you?” Shouyou finally asks when they reach the car. Atsumu opens his door for him. “You can tell me no.”
Atsumu stares at him. His self-preservation and little dignity begs him to say no, to save himself from the loss of waking up in the morning to an empty bed and the orange strands of hair Shouyou would have left behind. Despite everything and more, despite the moving-on routine, something like love possesses the hell out of Atsumu, and he murmurs a sure, you can stay with me, and receives an armful of Hinata Shouyou, sun incarnate. He feels warm.
“Sure, you can stay with me.” Atsumu repeats. When he exhales, he wonders if the throbbing of his heart is of relief, that in the end, it is still him that Shouyou came home to.
Atsumu drives into the night, silent, save for the rushing of blood he hears in his head. There are questions he’d like to ask. Am I still yours? Are you still mine? Are you leaving so soon, again? He steals glances at Shouyou, street light dancing on the bridge of his nose, the length of his neck bared as he rests his head on the window.
“You are so beautiful,” Atsumu says, instead. He realizes he can blame his loose tongue on the night, which is bleeding into the morning, and his lack of sleep. Yearning is not that different from the deep-seated hunger in his gut. He learns this when Shouyou turns out to be awake, after all, and when he looks at him wide-eyed, blush on his cheeks, Atsumu feels the familiar tug of hunger deep within, and calls it want.
“What?”
“You are so beautiful,” he repeats, slowly. He reaches for the radio and plays his favorite station, which was, by the stroke of luck, playing their song, from a lifetime ago.
Shouyou stares at him, and it’s a heavy gaze, one that Atsumu can’t bring himself to shrug off. It settles heavy on his shoulder and he hopes Shouyou likes what he sees, his side profile backlit, shadows across the planes of his cheek, and sunrise slowly tinting the sky.
“Thank you,” Shouyou finally says, in reply. He curls back into the passenger seat, eyes distant and almost unhinged. He reaches for one of Atsumu’s hands quietly, slips his fingers in between the spaces, and smiles. Something--- Atsumu can’t figure out the difference between comfort and regret, not now--- fills the space in between them, and as their song fades out into a softer melody, he tightens his hold on Shouyou’s hand.
“How long are you staying?” Atsumu asks, hand trembling. Are you coming back to me now? Goes unsaid. Shouyou--- smart, magnificent, wonderful Shouyou--- probably hears this, and more. Shouyou runs a thumb over his skin.
“Two weeks,” Shouyou murmurs. “Two weeks of vacation, and then another five months in Rio.”
He chooses his next question carefully. “Shouyou,” Atsumu pauses, and squeezes Shouyou’s hand. “What are we?”
“Exes,” Shouyou answers, without skipping a beat. “But we can be something else.”
The marvel with Shouyou is that he’s merciless. Shouyou loves without mercy, which is to say with his everything, regardless of his leaving. Atsumu finds that there is no other, better way to love than Shouyou’s own brand of it, merciless, no holds barred, and it hurts. By God does it hurt, Atsumu thinks maniacally, to love one Hinata Shouyou knowing there’s nothing he can do to make him stay, but it feels like the right choice.
“I’m yours,” he says, tender. “I always have been.”
Shouyou raises his hand and presses a gentle kiss on the back of it, and whispers something into the skin. Atsumu is almost delirious.
“I’m yours, too,” Shouyou’s lips forming the words. Atsumu laughs, and the dawn breaks with sunlight, hitting them both from all directions. Everything feels warm.
3.5 / pocari sweat, with love
YOU KNOW HOW TO WAIT, MIYA ATSUMU. SO YOU DO.
You have waited for Shouyou before, for seven years, and before you met him again you promised that you’d set for him. Osamu had called you stupid for obsessing over Hinata Shouyou and his magnificent jump and the fire in his eyes. But you waited, and now you are his setter, even when you’re seventeen thousand something kilometers away. He’s flying above a different ground, above sand, and you’re falling onto the familiar hardwood floor. You don’t mind waiting, because this is Hinata Shouyou, and once, when you were both lounging in between the sheets of your bed, spending Shouyou’s last day in Japan he told you he wanted you and that he wants you still. Hinata Shouyou wants you, which is to say, he is yours, no matter the distance. It is a promise.
Miya Atsumu, you wait, because it is a promise.